Conventional websites and applications provide useful services for people having various needs. For example, for buying and selling there are websites such as eBay and Amazon. For networking there are websites such as LinkedIn, and for social networking there are various websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The need for continuing education is growing. Individuals need to be lifelong learners, constantly upgrading their skills to remain employable. Corporations face the daunting challenge of keeping their global professional employees and partners fully trained while minimizing downtime and managing costs. On the supply side, content providers are under pressure to increase their top line and are always looking for new ways to increase reach as well as provide additional services. In spite of technological advances, the cost of education continues to rise without an increase in effectiveness.
There are numerous online educational institutions such as e-learning companies, learning content providers, learning management systems, and free web content. Each of these has its own disadvantages. For example, e-learning companies and content providers suffer from the fact that they are fragmented and provide their own content instead of providing an open system where any number of content providers can contribute to the educational process. On the other end of the spectrum, are the free web content providers, but these often have very limited mechanisms for allowing users to search for content and lack quality control over the content. Learning management systems are often internally oriented proprietary systems, and suffer from some of the same disadvantages as other e-learning systems.